


To catch a thief

by chacusha



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Phantom thief and detective, F/M, Just some unresolved sexual tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-10-29 20:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20802494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chacusha/pseuds/chacusha
Summary: No one:Me: Here's an AU where Rikku is a gentleman (lady) thief, and Auron is the police detective trying to catch her.(Pre-Aurikku.)





	To catch a thief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meilan_Firaga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/gifts).

> I've always wanted to write Aurikku but have never gotten around to it, so I really enjoyed being able to write for these prompts! I was also a bit worried this AU is too wild so I also wrote a more in-canon treat.

Auron had just sat down at his desk and taken the first bracing sip of coffee when a newspaper hit the surface of the desk in front of him.

"How's the case going?" a voice above him said. Auron did not have to look up to know it was Jecht and that he was smirking. Nor did he have to read the newspaper headline to know it was announcing the theft of a necklace -- the Necklace of Ixion -- from the temporary exhibit at the art museum. The owner of that particular item was already breathing fire down his neck.

Auron reached above his darkened lenses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Not well." It was the third burglary in as many months. They were always announced beforehand and, if Auron wasn't mistaken, they were getting more brazen.

"You mind telling me how a fully-trained police squad with full notice let a little girl slip through their fingers?" Jecht asked, barely able to keep the laughter out of his voice.

_Little girl_ (or _little lady_ when he was being polite) was the way Jecht referred to most women younger than him, but the thief was not a little girl. She was a young woman -- although admittedly a petite one. As for how she had managed it, well, the thief had an unbelievable number of tricks up her sleeve. She had equipment or the skills or an accomplice allowing her to disable cameras and security systems; holographic technology; a neverending supply of smoke bombs, light bombs, sound bombs, and who knew what else; grappling hooks; at least two kinds of escape vehicles -- a motorized hang glider and some kind of drone; and a voice changer, although that wasn't related to why she had gotten away last night. But Auron knew that Jecht wasn't actually interested in an explanation, just in the opportunity to bask in the irritation that was currently spreading across his face.

The chief of police, however, _was_ interested in the full explanation from Lieutenant Lucil regarding what had gone awry in last night's operation as well as an update from Auron as to whether he had any new leads (he did not). Braska listened carefully to Auron's updates and the lines of investigation he planned to pursue, before giving a curt nod of approval. "Sounds fine to me. Let me know if you need more support. We're stretched a bit thin right now and I'd rather prioritize investigating violent cases, but... we're drawing a lot of attention over these thefts."

"I understand, sir."

As Auron stood and turned to leave, Braska called after him, "Oh, and Detective, don't work too late tonight." Seeing Auron's momentary confusion, Braska added, "We're celebrating Yuna's birthday. You're invited."

"Ah... right." He'd forgotten about that in all the chaos of the past 24 hours, since the arrival of the note stating the intention to steal the necklace. "I'll just have to get my work wrapped up on time then."

"That's what I like to hear," Braska said, smiling with his eyes.

* * *

Sitting back down at his desk, Auron replayed the events of last night, hoping to glean any clues he could from small details he might have overlooked. This particular thief had named herself the Godhand, and that is how all her letters to the police station started ("Tonight, the Godhand will steal..."). For whatever reason, a group of officers, after realizing the thief was a woman, had taken to calling her Lady Godhand around the office, but nevertheless "Godhand" remained her handle.

At the time the thief had made her appearance on the scene, there were four officers standing next to the case with the necklace. The room they were standing in had been emptied of display items and the doors had been locked. The one exit that didn't have a door and instead connected directly to other rooms in the museum had two officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the opening. It would be hard to enter that way. And the room had no windows -- Lieutenant Lucil had chosen it because of that property.

Technically, Auron was only there to observe and, if needed (as in, if the thief succeeded), to collect clues and evidence from the scene. But in fact, he had... well, he'd get to that part later. At the time, he'd been standing in the corner of the room, which gave him a fairly good view of the rest of the room: the case, the entranceway, all six guards. It was from his corner that he saw the smoke bomb roll in, accompanied by that oddly-metallic, autotuned-sounding voice: "Evenin', officers!"

All the officers were wearing gas masks for this reason, but the smoke still hindered visibility. Just then, a large object barreled past/into the two guards in the entranceway and drew themselves up, hands on hips, in a corner of the room. It was a person in a brown leather suit -- the Godhand. Immediately, the guard closest to her drew his net gun and fired a net straight at her. It was a direct hit, and she went down with a yelp, limbs striking out wildly.

"Don't move!" the officer said standing over her and trying to grab hold of a limb or a shoulder, and trying to prevent the thief from standing up again. They struggled for a few seconds when suddenly the officer stopped. "It's... it's a doll!" Indeed, when the officer backed away, the figure in the corner moved hands and legs and eventually returned to a pose similar the one she had stood in before: upright with hands on its hips, except the pose was a bit ruined by the constraints and weight of the net. (Later, when Auron had taken a closer look at the doll, it was weighted and inflated in such a way that, when tossed, it would automatically return to this upright position.)

At that moment, a flash grenade went off, a brief, bright flash of light. When it receded, it was immediately apparent that the necklace was gone. The lock on the glass case had been forced open, and the box was empty.

"Over there!" one of the guards in the entrance to the room said, pointing in the direction of the sound of receding footsteps. Three of the guards took off running in that direction, the two from the entrance and one from near the case.

The remaining guards looked around the room uneasily.

"Should we... stay here?" one guard asked.

Auron didn't answer; his mind was whirring. The thief was obviously skilled, but even taking that into account, the theft had happened too quickly, too painlessly. Maybe it was possible for a thief with so much tech to pull that off, but the more likely possibility seemed to be --

"None of you move from this room," he commanded.

Auron consulted the map of the museum in his pocket. The footsteps must have been leading the officers as far away from the thief's planned exit point as possible. And there must be an easy route whereby the thief could surreptitiously peel away from the other officers and double back to the real exit point without passing by this room again. Based on these two suppositions, Auron located the most likely exit point and took off at a run there directly. He may not be too late...

He found what he was looking for in a room near the southeast corner of the museum: a police officer walking alone with purpose toward the exhibit room in that corner. Auron caught up to her. "Where are you going?" he said, grabbing hold of the officer's shoulder.

She whirled around with a small high-pitched noise of surprise, then, collecting herself, said, "I was just... going to the bathroom."

(Reflecting back on it, her voice had sounded like a normal person's voice. That said, who knew if she was using a voice changer underneath the gas mask still, just one that only changed pitch and tone slightly and did not hugely distort the voice.)

There was a long silence. Long enough for her to realize his suspicions, long enough for him to realize she had come to that realization, and long enough for her to realize he knew that she knew.

They moved almost at the same time: the thief whirling on the ball of her foot to make a dash for it; Auron sweeping with his leg to kick away that same pivot foot. The thief came crashing down, hands and knees hitting the tile floor. Seeing her about to rise to her feet again, Auron tackled her and attempted to pin her to the ground, hands grabbing hold of wrists and pressing them into the hard floor. Underneath him, he could see short-cropped brown hair under the straps of her gas mask. (Probably a wig, given what they found later.)

"Oh, Detective," she said in a faux-scandalized voice as she struggled and squirmed underneath him, "if you want to do _this_, at least take me out to dinner first."

Suddenly self-conscious, Auron recoiled as if he had been touching a hot iron. It was only a momentary lapse, but it was enough to allow the thief to roll out from under him, clamber to her feet, and start running.

(He still couldn't figure out why he had done that. It wasn't like it was the first time a suspect had attempted to flirt with him to get out of trouble. Trying very hard to ignore the internal Jecht-voice in his head suggesting it was because it had been so long since he'd gotten laid, Auron decided to chalk it up to the adrenaline impairing his judgment.)

The thief used a grappling hook to reach a row of small, half-meter-tall windows at the top of the corner room. Just before she slipped through a gap in the windows where a pane had been removed, she held up the gems of the Necklace of Ixion and said, "Thanks for this. See ya next time, Detective." And then she was gone.

"Damn it," Auron said. There weren't enough officers to have anyone stationed outside the museum. Once she was outside, the chance of apprehending the Godhand was basically nil.

He later found Lucil and explained what had happened -- leaving out, of course, how exactly the thief had managed to slip out of his hands. She and her team eventually found their missing member, Officer Elma, in the women's bathroom: asleep, tied up, and stripped of her outerwear.

There were advantages to wearing gas masks, but they also made it so that it was child's play for the thief to impersonate one of their number with a wig and the right clothes, without giving away her own identity. The lieutenant promised to file this lesson away for future reference. (Auron privately filed away his own set of lessons from this failure as well.)

And now he had a pile of gadgets on his desk that needed to be examined. So far, they all looked to be homemade, but there might be some clue to be gathered from what the material they had been made from, or by the way they had been constructed. And then there was background research to do as to why someone might want to steal the Necklace of Ixion in particular...

* * *

Several hours later, the chief and several officers headed over in a group to the Natural History Museum, which was where the party was being held. The crowd at Yuna's birthday party was quite unusual for a twenty-year-old woman, but Yuna wasn't an ordinary person. Among the guests were university friends, childhood friends, members of her extended family, her father's work colleagues, and even various local politicians. Her father was quite well-connected, and Yuna's social circle reflected that. Having grown up in the midst of these kinds of gatherings, she was perfectly at home talking to old and young and the distinguished and the ordinary all at once.

Along with others who had newly arrived at the party, Auron wished Yuna a happy birthday and made smalltalk -- well, mostly let other people do the talking -- until Yuna encouraged them all to get some food to eat, which Auron was happy to do. Once he filled up his plate, he found a couch in a quieter room and hoped that he wouldn't have to do much more socializing for the rest of the evening. He'd never been good at parties, and the older he got, the harder he found them, and the more appreciation he had for the quiet solitude of a night spent at home.

He had barely eaten his first dolma leaf, however, when he felt someone take a seat on his sofa. Resisting the urge to sigh, Auron looked over at the newcomer. It was a familiar face -- a cousin of Yuna's, close to her in age and a common sight in Chief Braska's house. Rikku was her name.

"Hey-o, Detective, how's life?" she greeted him cheerfully.

Auron dragged a hand over his five o'clock (six o'clock?) shadow. "Same as usual," he lied.

"Quite the party, huh?"

"Yes."

"Did you get a chance to talk to Yunie yet?"

Auron grunted an affirmative.

At the increasingly taciturn responses, Rikku lapsed into silence. Unlike most chatterboxes when denied the opportunity to chatter, though, she seemed to take Auron's grumpiness in stride, curling up cheerfully in her corner of the couch to tap rapidly on her phone.

The proficiency of her tapping reminded Auron -- Rikku had always been somewhat of a tech wizard, even when young. Same as her father. If anyone had the knack with mechanical contraptions to pull off the Godhand's arsenal, those two would certainly top the list. Auron studied Rikku out of the corner of his eye: her blonde hair twisted up and fanning haphazardly behind her head; bright green eyes; toned, lean legs drawn up in front of her so her feet were resting on the couch cushion. She had been on the swim team in high school, Auron knew -- she could hold her breath like a fish. He wasn't sure if she was still at it now that she was in college. But all in all, Rikku certainly had the physical fitness to pull off the athletics required to be a cat burglar, she had the mechanical knowhow, and she was roughly the right size.

But what motive could the niece of the police chief possibly have for becoming a cat burglar? For the thrill of it, out of sheer boredom?

At the absurdity of this last line of thought, Auron realized that he had spent the last minute contemplating the possibility of whether the party guest sitting next to him was the thief he was trying to track down. He let out a deep sigh. He really needed to shut off his detective brain and leave work at work. And maybe, for once, have fun at a party. His mouth quirked up in amusement at the very thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I was too lazy to come up with last names for everyone so uh... just pretend this is a world where everyone is mononymous (like Cher).


End file.
